Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 150
Aranya communed with Yiisuriel, and tried again, with the air of sneaking a sidelong glance. Looking, but not looking. Deploying her softest touch, as if her questions were mere breaths whispered across innumerable leagues. Intelligent, certainly. Feminine? Aye, but she could discern little else.
At some considerable length, she snorted, She’s tricky, noble Yiisuriel!
A whimsical mite indeed, the leviathan agreed so equably that the Immadian sensed a jest aimed in her direction.
She chuckled dutifully. Indeed. I … I think I might better try to inveigle her, Yiisuriel.
How?
By planting a suggestion that when she dreams, she might call upon me in her hour of need. That way – her power is so peculiar, like one of those multiphasic shields Hualiama’s writings describe. I cannot see how I could directly contact her psyche otherwise. It’s weirdly … inchoate. As slippery as a terrace lake trout.
Or a chaotic manifestation, the Air Breather rumbled contentedly, adding her own nuances to Aranya’s insight. A most excellent postulation, little one. Worthy of the Daughter of Onyx.
Aranya shivered at the compliment, and then shivered again in annoyance at her reaction. After several minutes of further discussion, she laid her bait. A hint. Perhaps a nudge of the subconscious which might result in that peculiar – well, most probably Shapeshifter presence – dreaming of a Star Dragoness. The only aspect of this interaction she truly understood, was that a similar inkling had led her to the Shadow Dragon of the Western Isles. How her life had changed since! How long ago that straightforward military campaign seemed now.
Oh Fra’anior, protect her father in his endeavours, and her mother in her undying sleep in the tomb behind Immadia’s palace …
Could it be that the Thoralians purposed to return to the Rift in order to steal further powers from the Ancient Dragon Infurion, as Fra’anior had suggested?
As their linked minds focussed on the matter of the Thoralian triplicate, Aranya and Yiisuriel stiffened simultaneously – the Shapeshifter physically, and the Air Breather mentally. They should have been focussing their attention much closer to home. They should have known, by some unthinkable miracle, that the Yellow-White Shapeshifters would have survived to fight another day. While they had been reaching to the farthest Isles in pursuit of intriguing wisps of fire life, they had contrived to ignore the mountain practically slapping them in the collective nose.
The Thoralians were rising. They had the First Egg.
Chapter 4: O Exalted Egg
DRAGON Ardan stared to his starboard flank, as grim-lipped as a living granite boulder, and thundered a Western Isles execration he sincerely hoped his Rider would not understand.
“The tone’s clear enough,” said Aranya, casually eavesdropping on his mood.
“Sorry,” he snarled.
Her tiny hand patted the scales beside his spine. Despite the thickness of his Dragon armour, he felt her touch keenly. “All our training for that deep dive, Ardan …”
“Whoosh beyond the Moons,” he replied, illustrating with an upswept wingtip.
“Replaced by whooshy excesses of magic?”
“A joke, beloved?” he snorted, playfulness tempered with trepidation. Both knew what this meant. Conflict. Barely a lull; never a day without experiencing either the consequences of battle or the prospect of more. Even he, a warrior born, grew jaded. When would it end? They were so weary.
“A sense of humour, beloved?” came the instantaneous riposte.
“Ha, would you imagine that?”
Every masculine sense, every Dragon or Human reaction within him, had felt hyper-sensitised to all that was Aranya – with or without her direct presence – since she had redrawn his draconic soul in that beautiful yet staggering irruption of what, by all magical science known to the Lost Islands communal mind, was meant to be real, plausible and even possible. Magic could not be created from nothing, they claimed. Aranya begged to differ. Causality must be grounded, they muttered. Aranya graciously swooped past that constraint without so much as blinking. A Shapeshifter’s second-soul must be demonstrably present before it could be embodied. Aarrrgghh … obviously, the draconic wisdom of aeons was as insubstantial as a breeze she wrapped about her incomparable little talons.
“Pollen-fluff to the Princess of Northern Storms,” he growled.
Melodious, husky laughter played over his senses, the melody of Immadia marred by the blighted pathways of her lungs and throat. Even the timbre of her voice had changed. Ardan grinned, yet a pang clenched within his belly, beneath the double-armoured muscular diaphragm that protected the lower lung-set. This marred woman faced her fate with grace, but his anger seethed like Fra’anior’s own caldera, depthless and unchanging.
His dark, lidded gaze turned to the West. To the Thoralians’ rising.
He could not yet see the trio of Yellow-White Shapeshifters, but the import of their revival was clear. Tendrils of eerie green fire leached upward from a broadly oval area of Cloudlands perhaps a league in diameter, spreading like wicked tongues both through the dense grey cloud layers out there and lapping hungrily toward the sky. Ardan suppressed an urge to start scratching his wingpits like a flea-ridden feline. His spine spikes prickled irately at the indignity implicit in his thoughts. If this was the First Egg’s power, it was fey. Had the Thoralians already corrupted their prize?
The region his Dragon-senses placed as lying immediately above the Suald-dak-Doon was beginning to stir and bubble like an ill-tended cauldron filled with a toxic brew of fate. Gaseous pockets burst randomly through the viscid air, roiling and popping and sparking with flashes of torpid lightning as though the magical power seething from the Egg changed the very atmosphere.
Inanely, his mind seemed set upon trying to place the colour of that phenomenon. He said, What do we call that colour – sickly moss-green? Tarnished brass, or –
Aranya grated, What has he done?
Her raw exhalation perfectly matched his response. All around they sensed the Air Breathers starting to react to avalanches of irksome, disruptive magic rolling against their flanks leagues beneath the watching Lesser Dragons; the great outcry in the communal mind as the alarm protocols triggered fear-fight responses especially amongst the Dragonkind. Yet despite the widespread disturbance, the initial clamour quickly settled as first Aranya and then Yiisuriel took charge, examining the vectors of danger. Information seemed to sift and flow about his awareness as Ardan took in the initial conclusions. No immediate danger. Disturbance, aye, and a type of magic unfamiliar to these immense Land Dragons, but unless this was merely a prelude to the Thoralians’ attack, the discomfort they felt would remain just that – discomfort. Still, the communal mind began to slam up barriers and gather its depleted resources, while the fatigued Dragonwings assembled in the great hangers.
Ardan felt his belly clench tautly against his labouring diaphragm, and forced himself to relax those unruly muscles. Perhaps they hoped they had seen the Thoralians’ worst. What did they dare now?
“Drakes?” Aranya guessed.
“Aye.”
From this distance, the winged predators seemed no larger than gnats as they drifted upward out of the seething Cloudlands, surrounded now by a rising funnel of limpid green, like a Western-Isles dust devil clenched in a draconic fist, upended, and given a lease on life that was as immense as it was ominous. The skies darkened as with an unnatural stormtide. Clouds belatedly began to boil out of the Suald-dak-Doon at a phenomenal rate, riding the escalating storm winds that rivalled anything the Amethyst Dragoness could have summoned – and he knew Aranya’s fury by the rasping of breath between her teeth and the sudden leap in her pulse. That Yellow-White parasite dared to mimic her signature powers; nay, even those of her grand shell-sire?
A low, sibilant roaring communicated to his Dragon senses. Ardan shook his head in confusion at the odd, distasteful scents conveyed by that small breath of the deeps, but Aranya immediately stiffened upon his back and shouted:
BRACE!
He saw nothing. Anticipated nothing. But the perturbation that struck them, rocked every Air Breather to its core. In less time than it took a Dragon to flicker his nictitating membranes, Ardan found himself pinned like an insect to an entomologist’s board as a tremendous storm-wave boomed over them, and though his mind tried to flinch and curl his wings for safety, he seemed impervious. Immobilised. Not even vibrating – nor were the Air Breathers!
It was only when his Rider groaned and slumped against his spine spikes that he realised what had happened.
Aranya to the rescue.
* * * *
For a change, it was Zuziana who caught a fainting Princess in her paw. Well, her woefully insubstantial paw. That rather squished a Dragon into the proverbial bath-chamber, a popular Remoyan saying. Propping her friend’s body up inelegantly, she swatted away a semiconscious burble of complaint. “Down, petal. And stay down.”
“Have to …”
“Have to nothing. She’s fine, Ardan.”
He rumbled, “She has to release the magic.”
“As usual, the unstoppable Immadian thought that in one breath she might prevent the Thoralians’ storm from bowling over dozens of Air Breathers, protect the rising Dragonwings from being helplessly tossed and tumbled beyond the beyond, and no doubt she’s propping up the stars and skies all by herself!”
Hearing herself, Zip promptly bit her lip and clamped her mouth shut before it spouted something even more injudicious. Stupid jealousy!
Ardan could not turn his head to glare at her, so he tried a mental glare instead.
Belay that nonsense – most especially mine, the Remoyan said brightly. What’s the plan, Shadow-man?
Attack –
Attack? What foolishness is this? You will attend the Council at once! Yiisuriel thundered.
A split second later, everyone was shouting at everyone else. Zuziana rolled up her mental sleeves, and hurled herself into the fray. She would fight for Aranya. She’d show them!
* * * *
Having bowed beneath the fracas as the force of Yiisuriel-ap-Yuron’s will swept all before her, Aranya suddenly found herself stretched across her strange mountaintop, watching the starry skies above be riven even as her body felt riven. In that rift was more than darkness. It was void. Absolute, aching, deathly absence, in which dwelled myriad creatures of such unimaginable malevolence, her spirit writhed as if wishing to flee her breast in stark terror. The stretching sensation, the awareness of magic tested beyond mortal limits, flung her straight back into memories of her suffering during the fullest bloom of the Shapeshifter pox with which Thoralian had tortured her and sought to break her spirit.
Now, she feared to let go. She feared the backlash. Yet more death? Intolerable.
Ah … aaaahhhh …
Hers was the voice that pleaded with the sundering skies.
When she glanced at her limbs in surprise, it was to find she was pinioned by nothingness. Could she guess, by her own Word of Command? She did not understand. Aranya cried out in a babble of words, trying to undo what she had wrought, but she did not know the correct formula to use. Unbrace? Undo? Let it be undone? Release? Nothing she said appeared to work, nor were any of her other soulmates present with her, which made her doubt if this was her soul space or merely a dream.
Disaster! Without forethought, her power had spilled across the leagues. Now, she had to act quickly as the demands of that untrammelled outburst sucked away her strength.
Focussing on the pain, Aranya stilled her spirit. Hualiama? Blue-star, promise-star, I need … uh, I know I always beg for your help when it’s all charring in Fra’anior’s own caldera, but I honestly don’t understand what I’ve done wrong this time.
Petal.
She began to turn toward that familiar whisper, when a weight thumped right into her diaphragm and Sapphire snuggled so fiercely against her, it was almost as if her tiny friend wished to burrow beneath her skin. Ari hurt? Ari love, want-my-Ari! burbled the dragonet. Perching happily upon Aranya’s chest, she chattered, Help my petally-girly heal, see? Touch Ari! Good, aye? Goody-goody-good?
Why was Sapphire so animated? Aye, oh, thanks, Aranya whispered, shifting her head to peer past her friend as coolness invaded her overstretched muscles. A touch of healing. The dragonet’s powers were growing.
Blue-star! You came!
Sweet petal, you called, didn’t you? purred the blue-haired twin, the one whom Aranya understood was the embodiment of her Aunt’s Dragoness-soul, or Dragonsoul, for short.
Where she walked, there had to be – Us, said blonde-Hualiama from the other side, with a concerned chuckle. Sapphire’s wingtip tickled her nose, causing Aranya to sneeze her intended greeting into oblivion. Hold firm just a moment more, dear one. What you are experiencing is, I believe, a visual representation of the Command magic acting upon your psyche. You have to end this Command before you perish.
Won’t I just – holy Fra’anior!
She stared at herself. The girl whose approach had been obscured by Sapphire’s antics. The mirror image of herself stepped forward, dropping each of the Hualiama twins’ hands as she smiled at – Aranya blinked – Aranya? Double the Princess? Aranya reproduced in every detail – no, not quite. The other girl certainly had the crazy, kaleidoscopic hair tumbling past her waist. The scarring. The same generous lips and high Immadian cheekbones, lending her large eyes an exotic tilt that she had oftentimes noted in the mirror without thinking much more of it, but now, a pang pierced her breast. She could have been beautiful. Had been, perhaps. But the rest of her life would be lived behind the veil.
Her head spun. Who was this?
Like our surprise? chorused the Hualiamas, not failing to hide their glee.
I’m delighted! the Immadian spluttered. Noble Aunt, how did you … is it –
Your Dragoness. It’s us, Aranya, replied her twin. I invited her along and she managed to embody all by herself. Aren’t you clever?
Whaa – uh, why the amethyst gemstone flowers all over our skin, in that case? The prone Aranya had to laugh at her Dragonsoul’s peeved expression. Roaring rajals – her Dragonsoul! Portrait of a Human gone wrong?
You’re the artist between us, the other Aranya pout-growled.
She was? Only one of her … was? Peculiar.
The pattern that covered every visible inch of skin was aesthetically pleasing, as if an invisible paintbrush had produced curlicue tendrils and loops of pale but clearly discernible flowers, most similar in her experience to the Immadian simmis-lily, which bloomed briefly alongside meltwater brooks and in the shallows of the terrace lakes each summer. But the petals were gemstone-faceted, as were the stems, she adjudged. Only the terrible replicated scars, nodules and pits broke the insculpted, almost lacquer-like organic effect just beneath her skin.
Stop grinning at us like that, you lovely loon, Dragoness Aranya added. We are indeed in trouble, as you’ve managed to figure out. O, Humansoul …
Very fetching body art, my long-lost soul aspect, she returned drolly. Now I know what you – I – think of me. What shall we –
Ardan’s proximate bellowing shook them all. ARANYA! TO ME!!
Last she saw, the Hualiama twins broke into identical expressions of alarm. Oh no, you can’t –
She faded.
* * * *
How dare you simply roll over and say yes to everything that Yiisuriel wants, without the slightest consideration of my feelings or opinions? Ardan raged. Were you even listening?
Aranya blinked slowly. Uh … mercy, Ardan –
Mercy? You dare beg mercy? The Shadow shook the girl in his paw, alarmed by the urge he had to squeeze her frail Human body until she screamed. No! Ferality? He thrust the sense of imminent peril aside. He was entirely sane, just enraged. Who do I have here? Zip, or Aranya?
Aranya.
Then – what’s the matter with you? Focus, my – he swallowed hard, trying to control the fires searing his arteries – my beloved. Where were you?
Meeting my Dragonsoul twin for the first time. You took me away.
She spoke factually, but he heard petulance. You never regard me in situations like this. What about me, Aranya? Am I to be your lackey? Your distant second? Your husband for a season, whose lot is to be cast aside whenever it suits the Star Dragoness’ purposes?
Hurt sprang into her eyes. Welling tears. Ardan, I am doing my very best –
Aye, doing your utmost to satisfy everyone else’s needs! the Dragon roared. Despite his better intentions, the words spilled forth, each more incendiary than the last. Every bloody request, every endless demand, every insufferable burden, you try to carry them all because, you tell me, you should and you alone must and it’s just impossible, Aranya. Impossible! Don’t you start crying again, I’m sick of the tears! We need to fight! The enemy is out there and all I hear from your lips is the Princess of Immadia, the Star Dragoness, the freaking grand-shell daughter of Fra’anior himself shrivelling before the will of others! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
He had never seen her look so shocked. She was meant to be the unflappable Princess of Immadia, and he had just injured her inmost being. Ardan hated himself. He abhorred exposing his inner putridity to anyone else’s awareness, but most of all to Aranya, for he realised that he lived and died by what she saw in him. He was weak! Selfish! How could she claim to love a creature like him?
Beloved Shadow, I have neglected thee –
Aye, this is all about me! he lashed out thunderously. Me first, for once in our lives!
Again, she flinched. That was not what Aranya had been about to say, and he knew it. The emotions were scribed upon her unguarded features, and this warrior-Dragon felt sick. Shuttering his primary eye-membranes, he drew in a deep, shuddering breath that incongruously tantalised his nostrils with the very tips of her long, wavy locks. Nor what he had meant to say. Ever.
